The movement challenging the criminal justice system's treatment of black people continues to build this week. On Monday morning, Bay Area organizers blockaded entrances to Oakland Police Department headquarters and brought traffic to a standstill on nearby Interstate 880.

Long troubled and tenuous, the relationship between police departments and African-American communities is now toxic, and its repercussions may be most visible in the wounded eyes of black children. Since Brown’s death in August, scores of parents have brought their kids, some barely out of kindergarten, to protests nationwide and sparking discussions with them about racial profiling, police brutality, and the sad, but necessary refrain that “Black Lives Matter.”

In today’s economy, overwhelming debt is an unfortunate reality for millions of Americans. From credit card debt to mortgage debt to student loan debt, Americans increasingly live off of borrowed money. But few realize how the criminal justice system imposes increasing debts on individuals. Worse still, criminal justice debt perpetuates mass incarceration.

At 1:01 PM on Monday afternoon thousands of individuals—a large portion of whom are college and high school students—stopped what they were doing. In acts of remembrance of slain black teenager Michael Brown, people across the country staged die-ins, demonstrations, and fell quiet for four and a half minutes—a protest which they say is "only the beginning."

In an announcement today, the White House has pledged $263 million in new federal funding for police training and body cameras, including $75 million allocated specifically for the purchase 50,000 cameras for law enforcement officers across the country.

Hundreds of protesters in Missouri have a begun a week-long long march organised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in a move designed to inspire the spirit of the civil rights movement of 1950s and 60s, following a grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown.